


Katabasis

by effing_gravity (Malteaser)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Captivity, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Implied Uriel/Lilith, M/M, Mentions of Hastur/Ligur, Mentions of the Spanish Inquisition, Torture, Whump, You heard me. I said what I said.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-03 17:47:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 16,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20456939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malteaser/pseuds/effing_gravity
Summary: Crowley has been discorporated and is being held hostage by Hell in exchange for Aziraphale's help. A terrible time is had by all, as Aziraphale tries to free Crowley and Crowley struggles to hold on long enough to be rescued- not a position he enjoys being in, even without the torture.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the kink meme prompt: "Heaven or Hell one, you choose, takes Crowley prisoner as a means to control Aziraphale. 
> 
> If it's Heaven, they want him to do his job, stop doing frivolous miracles, prove he's loyal. If it's Hell, they want him to serve as a double agent, getting them information, etc. 
> 
> If Aziraphale does as he's told, Crowley doesn't get hurt. Much. And maybe once in a while Aziraphale gets to spend some time with him. 
> 
> But every time Aziraphale sees Crowley, he's got new injuries, is a little more broken. Aziraphale spends what precious few moments they have together trying to give Crowley a little comfort, a little reprieve from the suffering, promising to find a way to get him home for good."

_Aziraphale doesn’t belong in Hell._  
  
It’s not a new thought- he’s had it for centuries, millennia even. Of course, for most of the time he’s been thinking it, he’s been worried about Aziraphale Falling, about maybe even having caused that Fall himself. It’s only recently that he’s been having it because the only time they can see one another is when Aziraphale comes to Hell.   
  
“That’s a new suit,” Crowley says, a bit inanely. He tries not to wince at the rough quality of his voice, or at the way Aziraphale’s face falls when he hears it.   
  
“Yes, it is,” Aziraphale replies, fiddling with the cuffs a little.  
  
“Not sure it suits you,” he remarks, because it really doesn’t suit him at all. It’s a sleek russet brown number, new and dark. It looks wrong on him- like the worst of Heaven and Hell have been stitched together by a particularly sadistic tailor. He’s not even wearing a bow tie with it- he’s got a regular necktie, the same russet brown as his suit, with light golden pinstripes that compliment his hair and his ring. It’s crisp and good looking and he absolutely _despises_ it.   
  
“Yes, well, it gets the job done,” Aziraphale says quickly. He won’t talk about what it is Hell wants from him. Crowley’s stopped asking. He doesn’t want to spend what little time they have arguing.  
  
“How long do we have?” he asks.   
  
“Allegedly, twelve hours,” Aziraphale says, shooting the hourglass on the wall a dirty look. He’s said, more than once, they he’s quite sure that the thing moves too quickly to be at all accurate, and Crowley is pretty sure that he’s got it right. “I’ll ask to use my own timepiece next time, I think. Can we- I mean-” He opens his arms a little helplessly.  
  
“Please,” Crowley says even as he leans forward and rests his head against Aziraphale’s shoulder. It’s a habit now, that he’s ruthlessly instilled in himself these past several decades: Aziraphale is the one who gets to decide when and how they touch, it’s Aziraphale who decides how fast to go. It’s a hard habit to break, even now, post-Apocalypse when they were supposed to be free.  
  
It’s a hard habit to break, even now that they know it to be a lie. They were never going to be allowed their freedom. If Hell hadn’t discorporated him and used his immortal self as leverage over Aziraphale, he has no doubt that Heaven would have, if not found a way to kill them outright.   
  
Aziraphale still has his corporation, the same old one Heaven gave him so many thousands of years ago, the same new one Adam had created. Beneath the too-stiff fabric of his horrible suit there is skin and beneath that skin there is blood pumping through his veins, there is a chest which rises as air is pulled into his lungs and falls as it is released, there is a heart beating that Crowley puts his hand over.   
  
It’s terrifyingly fragile and comforting all at once- if Aziraphale loses his corporation, he’ll be sent straight to Heaven just as Crowley has been sent to Hell, and that’ll be the end of it.   
  
Aziraphale’s wings manifest, cocooning them both. They block out the sounds- Jesus, Adam, Whoever, he’s stopped noticing how loud it is until it’s gone- and bring a bit of fresh air in. It’s London air, so it’s only really fresh by comparison to the sulfuric stink of Hell. It smells like hot tar, baked piss, and sweat, so it must be summer up there now. It had been spring when he’d been discorporated. He never thought he’d miss the pollen.   
  
Aziraphale’s hands hover over his back, not knowing where to touch. “Where does it hurt worse, dear?” he asks finally.   
  
“Shoulders,” Crowley grunts. They’d been dislocated, often, and somehow they never managed to pop them back in correctly. His hands keep going numb.   
  
Aziraphale’s hands flutter to his shoulders, and his fingers whisper careful instructions about how his joints should fit together, how strong and hardy his tendons have to be to prevent this from happening again.   
  
It’s only going to make them try harder, but he’s not going to mention that to Aziraphale. There are worse things they could be doing to him, after all, if they weren’t so hung up (ha!) on the garrucha.   
  
He breaths Aziraphale in. The dusty hot cocoa and old-book scent of his shop is there, of course, but there’s something else that clings to him, something almost earthy.   
  
“How are my plants?” he asks.   
  
“They’re, well- they’re being watered,” Aziraphale says, with no small amount of guilt.  
  
Crowley laughs, and then hisses as blood rushes back down through his arm. Aziraphale rubs at his shoulders as he expounds upon the various ways his plants are confounding him, very carefully avoiding the iron collar that keeps him in his more-or-less human shape.   
  
He’s tried taking it off before. They’ve both tried it. It does nothing but make Crowley feel like he’s dying all over again, so now they leave it be.   
  
They talk- about the plants, about the bookshop, about the waitstaff at the Ritz- and then Aziraphale sighs, apologizes, and retracts his wings. Crowley winces as Pandemonium assaults his senses once more. The smell is awful, and the screaming alone is so overwhelming that he nearly misses unholy scrape of the key in the lock.   
  
“Time’s up,” Hastur says.   
  
Aziraphale gives his hand one final squeeze before standing. “Until next time, then, Crowley,” he says, and leaves without so much as looking in Hastur’s direction.   
  
Hastur waits until Aziraphale leaves, and then snaps his fingers lazily, and the cot he’s been sitting on disappears. Crowley’s expecting it, and manages not to fall onto the floor. He sneers and when the manacles come into being around his wrists he tries to rattle them in a somewhat menacing manner.   
  
It doesn’t work. He’s been defanged, and they all know it. Hastur barely bothers with kicking him a bit before leaving, a look of utter contempt on his face. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter where the torture tag really starts being relevant. Don't worry, it's not the whole fic, just the next few chapters of it.

They stick to the classic Spanish Inquisition stuff when they torture him.   
  
It’s meant to be ironic, he supposes. They must still believe that commendation they gave him was for real, which is genuinely ironic. He kind of wants to tell them that he didn’t do it. He kind of wants to tell them how many of the things he’s supposed to have done- how many of the things they’ve praised him for over the years- aren’t his doing at all. The Spanish Inquisition? He’d gotten the commendation, and finally found himself arsed to take a peek and see what they were doing, and promptly got blind stinking drunk for a full week, and stayed decently soused for months afterwards. The Albigensian Crusade? Under the right circumstances and at his most bitter he might have thought of the line “Kill them all, God will know His own” , but he would never have thought to say it before killing a bunch of people sheltering in a church. White phosphorus? Given how it has a suspiciously similar effect on humans as holy water has on demons, he’s pretty sure that someone on the other side thought that one up. Fixing up Mary Queen of Scots with James Hepburn? Aziraphale had lost that coin toss, and neither one of them thought it was going to lead to anything anywhere near that dramatic when they’d decided to flip for it.  
  
He really wants to throw it all back in their faces. _I’ve been lying and fucking you over for centuries, are you just now figuring this out?_  
  
Unfortunately, they’d put Hastur in charge of things, and Hastur doesn’t want him to talk. A wad of fabric jammed between his teeth denies him the ability to speak and lets Hastur enjoy his screaming with a minimum amount of muffling.   
  
So. Torture.   
  
It’s not every day, he doesn’t think. It’s hard to tell. The hellfire burning in the prison remains the constant and only source of light. They don’t feed him, of course, since he doesn’t need to eat. He doesn’t need to sleep either, though he sometimes feels like he should be sleeping. They never let him do it for long, definitely never long enough for him to feel rested, but sometimes the exhaustion gets to him, and he nods off. He’s decided that it’s roughly three days between each instance of sleep. It’s probably not even remotely accurate, but it helps him keep his head.   
  
When it comes to the actual tortures, the garrucha is a favorite of Hastur’s. Crowley thinks it’s because he considers himself locked in some kind of competition with Aziraphale as to the state of his shoulders. It’s kind of funny, in its own way. Aziraphale will heal him of whatever injuries he can no matter how he’s been hurt, and will be just as upset whether its his shoulders that keep getting dislocated or his toenails that keep being pried off. Crowley lets him keep thinking that it's the shoulders that bother him specifically, though. It’s convenient. It stops him from moving on to other things.   
  
Not like the garrucha is a picnic or anything. It goes like this: Crowley’s arms are fastened behind his back, and from them he’s suspended. From there there are a couple of different variants. There’s the classic technique, where he’s just left suspended until his shoulders give out once more. There’s the slightly more advanced technique, where there are weights fastened to his ankles that make the dislocation come all the quicker. There’s the complicated version where he’s hoisted up and up, and then dropped suddenly, sometimes with weights on his ankles, sometimes without, often several times in a row. And then there’s the demonic version, which substitutes the weights for imps that gnaw and scratch at him as they hang on.   
  
Imps used to be human souls, once. It’s not unlikely that the ones Hastur brings in were Inquisitors during their lives, though no one ever says as much.   
  
It lasts until Hastur gets tired of popping his shoulders back in. Sometimes he doesn’t bother doing it a final time before he goes, leaving Crowley manacled against the wall in a body that doesn’t need food or water, that shouldn’t need sleep, but has been forced to need air and now needs to gasp for every breath against the pain.   
  
He needs to breath of course, for the toca to work on him.   
  
Toca means, literally, a kerchief or turban cloth, which is kind of what the cloth used resembles. The Inquisition also called it interrogatorio mejorado del agua, which translates to improved water interrogation. These days it’s called waterboarding, or if you’re feeling particularly defensive about it, simulated drowning.  
  
Whatever you call it, it sucks. Crowley hates it, from the beginning when Hastur manifests a table and ties him down to it, straight through the middle when Hastur pours the water over him (sulfuric and just this side of boiling hot- you can’t really get any other kind of water down here), and all the way down to the end when he passes out. Hastur doesn't bother gagging him for this. He knows that Crowley won't be able to say much of anything while he's struggling to breathe and failing.   
  
Hastur used to wake him up by punching him in the stomach. Then one day Crowley managed to vomit on him- one of the few moments of anything like triumph he’s managed to have so far. He cherishes that moment, he really does.   
  
Hastur throws imps at him when he wants him to regain consciousness now. He’s pretty sure he shouldn't think of that as a victory, but he does.   
  
There’s one more item of the classical list of Inquisitorial torments, and it’s the one they use the least. That’s also very ironic, because it’s essentially the rack, and the rack is pretty much _the_ quintessential hellish torture, right up there with red hot pokers and burning black flames.   
  
But they only break out the potro when the want to make a point to Aziraphale.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That torture tag is still very present in this chapter!

The potro is the only torture that doesn’t take place in his cell, so at least he gets that much warning when it’s going to happen.   
  
They drag him, bound and gagged, into the room where the potro resides. There aren’t any imps when they do this, but plenty of other demons- ones with titles, and high ranking ones at that- tend to show up for this. Dagon, for example, joins in fairly often. Beelzebub had showed up once, which had been beyond terrifying. He’d really thought, for a moment there, that he was going to get his arms ripped clear off of him that time.   
  
Aziraphale is always there. He used to beg, Aziraphale. He used to plead and try to bargain as they fastened him down and had, at times, gotten so upset that they’d felt the need to chain him down too, before he could try to attack them.   
  
Now he stands there, pale and somber in his infuriating modern suit, and bites his cheek, trying to be stoic.   
  
Crowley’s shoulders tend to go first, since they’re generally doing this after he’s gone a few rounds with the garrucha without Aziraphale’s healing influence. All the rest- ankles, wrists, knees, elbows, hips- seems to go more or less at random, or more likely at how Hastur turns the crank.   
  
The sounds are the worst, weirdly enough. It’s painful beyond painful, and by the time Hastur finishes he’s always screamed his throat raw and there are black and white dots flashing through his vision, but the sounds are just the worst- all that popping and snapping that he can’t even try to block out because it’s coming from his body, it’s his form that’s being slowly pried apart.   
  
Aziraphale, even when he’s trying to be stoic, is still Aziraphale. He might not beg any more, but he does weep for Crowley. The tears generally start around the time joint three pops out and he’s full out sobbing by the time joint number five goes, and from there Crowley can no more tune him out that he can the sounds of his body breaking.   
  
There comes a point where they stop pulling at him, sometimes before everything’s popped, more often after. Crowley lies there and tries to focus through the haze of pain because this is the only time anyone will talk about what they want from this.   
  
It takes Aziraphale a little time to get a hold of himself. Crowley is pretty sure they slap him sometimes to make him get a hold of himself. He jerks every time he hears it, as much as he can, the instinct to intervene overruling everything else for one panic-induced moment. It’s an instinct he really wishes he could suppress, because it makes his ears ring and his vision blur and he needs to be able to pay attention for when they actually start talking.   
  
Aziraphale won’t tell him what it is Hell wants his help with and Crowley has stopped asking. That doesn’t mean he no longer wants to know.   
  
_They don’t trust me. It’s going to take time._  
  
_I can’t exactly march up there and make an appointment, you know._  
  
_I am trying my hardest, I assure you, I just need more time._  
  
It’s always vague, always nonspecific, and the only thing Crowley can get from it is that they’re using Aziraphale to get at Heaven, somehow. He’s not sure to what end that might be, and he’s not sure he really cares to know. The means are horrifying enough all on their own, and he's not referring to the fact that they’re using him to force Aziraphale into doing their bidding. If Heaven gets their weirdly uniformly-filed claws in Aziraphale now, then it doesn’t matter what Hell does to Crowley. He’ll never get out from under them again. They'll never be free. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter where the torture warning is in effect.

Then there comes the day that they decide to put him through the potro without Aziraphale.   
  
They do it just after he leaves, maybe only an hour or two later. He spends the time and energy he would have spent trying to figure out what they have Aziraphale doing trying to figure out why they’ve broken from their pattern, and as Aziraphale’s just shored up his shoulders so it’s his hip that goes out of joint first. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same as it would be with Aziraphale in attendance.  
  
They leave his shoulders more or less intact, which surprises him for the brief period of time there is between it registering that he’s being unchained and being dumped onto the floor.   
  
He shouts, and blesses as best he can. He’s still gagged, which makes it difficult, but he does his best to make Hastur’s ears burn.  
  
The gag might be a good thing, really. For a time his teeth are clenched so tightly against the pain that he might very well crack one or more of them otherwise.   
  
Hastur waits him out. And when Crowley finally is able to focus well enough to look up at him he opens the door with a wave of his hand.   
  
“Well,” he says, looking down at him. “I think you should know your way back to your cell by now.”  
  
_Ah,_ Crowley thinks. _That’s why now._  
  
Why now: because with Aziraphale having just been here and fortified his shoulders, they are more or less guaranteed to hold up and give him just enough of a range of motion to wriggle forwards.  
  
Why now: because if Aziraphale had been there, then he wouldn’t be able to stand it. He would beg, again, he would plead and bargain and shout, he would work himself into such a state that they would chain him up again, and that would just be a distraction from the spectacle Hastur is making of Crowley.  
  
Why now: because without Aziraphale there, this can be something personal, strictly between Hastur and Crowley, when the truth is that it both is and isn’t. Of course Hastur hates Crowley, and of course the feeling is mutual, it’s been that way since practically the capital-B Beginning. But this level of vitriol is about _Ligur_. It’s about Crowley wiping Ligur from existence right in front of him, and him wanting to do the same by wiping out Aziraphale in front of Crowley, and not being able to due to the politics of the situation. But demons aren’t supposed to love, and if he’s got it right, then Beelzebub and the rest will be watching them all very carefully, punishing any deviation before it can turn into someone like him. What might have been tolerable behavior from two Dukes of Hell right before the Apocalypse could never be so much as acknowledged now.   
  
If this had happened to anyone else but Hastur, or even if Crowley had been learning about it from the safety of London, he might feel a small amount of sympathy. As it is, it’s just something to think about when he needs to think about _something_ or else he’ll go crazy.   
  
Like now, for instance.   
  
It’s a very public spectacle, Crowley’s long, slow crawl back to his cell. Demons line the halls: they jeer, throw things at him, and generally do all the can to make what’s already a near-impossible task harder. His more-or-less functional shoulders give him enough range of motion to move himself forward, but not by much and none too quick either. His arms in general are still useless, and his legs are even worse, and that’s just in terms of movement. In terms of pain, it’s probably the worst thing they’ve done to him. So far.   
  
_You must crawl on your belly and eat dust for the rest of your days._ It starts out a taunt, and becomes a chant. Crowley hears it a few times before he can parse the words, and when he does he almost wants to laugh.   
  
_Yeah guys, demons quoting scripture for their own purposes, real original,_ he might have said, in even mildly better circumstances.   
  
As it is, he's still gagged, and it takes everything he has just to keep moving. He clings to the idea that they’ll just leave him alone once he gets back to his cell, that once he’s in his cell he can rest a bit. The absolute second he starts to cross the threshold he also starts telling himself not to count on it, but to his shock it turns out to be true. Once inside, Hastur locks the door and leaves him alone.   
  
He feels like he could sleep for a week, at least, and so he does just that, if not for longer. He only wakes up because he manages to twitch in his sleep enough to jolt himself awake. He stays awake just long enough for the agony to settle into a kind of pins-and-needles numbness, and then he falls asleep again.   
  
That process repeats four or fives times. He’s exhausted. All he wants, right now, is to be able to rest, and if they’re going to allow him that much he’ll take it.   
  
And then, one day, he wakes up because the door to his cell is opening, and there’s Aziraphale again.   
  
“Aziraphale!” he tries to say, but of course, he’s been gagged this whole time. The only thing that comes out is a pathetic jumble of muffled consonants.   
  
Aziraphale is on his knees, grey in the face, hands fluttering over Crowley’s body before Crowley can finish attempting to speak. “How long as he been like this?” he asks.   
  
“Since just after you were last here,” Hastur tells him.   
  
Aziraphale makes a pained, angry sound and goes very still. After a moment he takes a deep breath and says, with forced calm, “I am doing everything you ask of me.”  
  
“That doesn’t work down here any more than it worked with Her,” Hastur tells him. “You’ve got six hours.” He saunters out. Crowley marks the movement with a bit more resentment than usual.   
  
Aziraphale glowers at the door for a moment, and then shakes his head before turning his attention back to Crowley. “I’m going to get this gag off of you, Crowley. You tell me if there’s anything I need to do or not do, and then I’ll heal you up. Sound good?”  
  
Crowley grunts his assent, and lifts his head so Aziraphale has an easier time ungagging him. Even with that, it takes him several long minutes to manage it- his hands are shaking too much to undo the knot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your comments!


	5. Chapter 5

“That’s another new suit,” Crowley mutters, because it is: walnut brown, stiff and woolen. “What’s with all the new suits?”   
  
Aziraphale shifts uncomfortably beneath him; above him, his wings flutter nervously. The air they’ve brought in with him smells like dead wet leaves and no small amount of smoke, and there’s a distinct nip to it. Bonfire night, maybe. He’s missed two of those now. One more and he’ll officially have been held prisoner down here for longer than he’d thought they might have a shot at freedom.   
  
“Oh well, you know,” Aziraphale says. “It’s- I don’t relish the idea of getting the stink of Hell into clothing I actually like.”  
  
Crowley laughs, because while it’s clearly not the whole truth- not even close to the whole truth- he can also tell that it’s _true_. Aziraphale relaxes, lets out a small chuckle himself.   
  
He runs his fingers through Crowley’s hair. It had been cut short when he’d been discorporated, and it’s short now. His hair doesn’t grow down here, and neither does his nails. It’s probably for the best that they don’t.  
  
Aziraphale used to have to get so drunk before he would touch him like this. So very, very drunk, and then, after the Antichrist had arrived, he wouldn’t do it at all.   
  
And then, after Armageddon failed to happen, he had started again, minus most of the drinking. There had been a lot of small, innocuous touches, starting with their legs brushing together as they dined at the Ritz and just building steadily from there. They’d held hands in St. James’ Park, and under the table during dinners out. They’d gone back to Aziraphale’s place, or even just _stayed_ at Aziraphale’s place, enjoying the relative freedom it gave them to forgo things like Aziraphale’s politeness and Crowley’s sunglasses. They talked about the most ridiculous things, Crowley lounging on the floor or the sofa as the mood struck him, and Aziraphale just fitting himself in wherever was close.  
  
He’d sat with Crowley’s head on his lap once. He’d actually picked Crowley’s head up and then sat where it had been, giving Crowley no choice but to settle against his thigh. He’d been talking before that, but he has no idea, even now, what he’d been going on about. The move had derailed his train of thought completely.   
  
“Is this all right, Crowley?” Aziraphale had asked.  
  
“More than,” Crowley had replied, with more sincerity than he’d meant to show.   
  
That was that. After a moment, Aziraphale had started to talk about his ire with the Oxfordians, which was his default subject to ramble about when he didn’t know what he should be talking about. And he’d run his fingers through Crowley’s hair, just as he is doing now.   
  
Crowley lets him, even though a part of him feels a little bitter about the fact that they’ve probably touched about as much down here as they ever did in their whole 6000 years on Earth.  
  
“You know they’re never going to let me go, right?” Crowley says. The fingers in his hair still. “It doesn’t matter what you do, or what you don’t do. They’ll never let me go again.”  
  
He can hear Aziraphale’s throat working for a while before he speaks. “I don’t expect that they’ll _let_ us do anything but suffer.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“And I’m not planning on asking their permission to leave with you.”  
  
“Right,” Crowley drawls. For a moment he’s extremely angry. He doesn’t want Aziraphale’s optimism, not here, not now. He wants-  
  
He wants Aziraphale’s safety, which is only going to come if he abandons Crowley. And he wants to leave this place behind, and just go back to _living_, which can only happen if Aziraphale finds a way to rescue him. And either way, he’s pretty sure he can’t have what he wants.   
  
Aziraphale leans forward. For one heart-stopping moment Crowley is sure that he’s going to kiss him.   
  
“Don’t,” he hisses. “Aziraphale, just- not here. Not here, please.”  
  
They haven’t kissed yet. Not properly kissed, at least: Aziraphale had pressed a kiss to his cheek, once, chaste and brief on his way out the door. Crowley had felt it tingle all the way back home.  
  
It’s been six thousand years. There may very never be a time other than this. He still doesn’t want their first kiss to be tainted by _this_.  
  
Aziraphale doesn’t precisely pull back, but he does change the angle enough for their foreheads to bump together instead.   
  
“I will get you out of here, Crowley. I swear it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're halfway there! Are you ready for shit to start hitting the fan?


	6. Chapter 6

Crowley picks a fight with him, the very next time Aziraphale comes down.   
  
There are a lot of reasons. Aziraphale is changing, that’s the big one: he’s losing weight, he can barely smell the bookshop on him any more, and he's wearing all those damnable modern suits. And all of those are just symptoms of something greater.

Aziraphale doesn't _change_. Aziraphale gets _comfortable_ and then Aziraphale _stays_. This- Aziraphale denying himself comforts like his food and his shop and his suits- is _bad_.   
  
He’s not getting out of here. He knows that. He’s been damned, eternally, twice over, and he can accept that, if he can just keep Aziraphale from being dragged down with him this time.   
  
So he picks a fight. It hasn’t been too long, since they last saw one another. Hastur hasn’t bothered him too much. He’s had time to think things through, and he has the energy for it, so he fights.  
  
“What is it you think going to happen? What can you possibly think is going to happen?”  
  
He doesn’t let Aziraphale touch him from the get go. His shoulders are still unset and his arms are still not quite working- he can barely move his left one at all. It doesn’t matter.   
  
It doesn’t matter until Aziraphale starts fighting back.   
  
“If you think that there is any way I would ever leave you behind, then think again!”  
  
That’s when things get ugly.   
  
“You’ve left me behind before. Don’t you stand there and pretend like you’ve never left me behind before! You have left me plenty of times, what’s once more?”  
  
“This time it would be permanent!”  
  
“This time, I’m asking you to.”  
  
They have eight hours, this time. A full day’s work, back in London at least. Can he break this six thousand year old bond in the amount of time a department store clerk would begrudgingly be on the clock for? He’s about to find out.   
  
“Is that the difference? The fact that I’m asking you to, instead of you just walking away?”  
  
He’s not expecting Aziraphale to lose his temper- actually wait, no. That’s a lie. He’s not expecting Aziraphale’s lost temper to result in anything physical.   
  
And then Aziraphale has grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him in close.  
  
“Let go of me,” Crowley says. He tries to sound menacing, but even to his own ears he sounds fragile and scared.   
  
Aziraphale’s wings surround them, and even now, no small part of Crowley wants to bask in that protective embrace. “Crowley, my dear-”  
  
But he can’t, can he? “I said, let go of me.”  
  
Aziraphale doesn’t let go of him. But he does move back half a step, and does shutter his expression. “How do you get your corporations?”  
  
“What.” Crowley can’t help but feel like this is a question from an entirely different conversation.   
  
“How do you get your corporations?” Aziraphale whispers. “In Heaven- it’s been a laboratory type setting for the past couple of centuries, before that it was a kind of maternity ward hospital. I can’t find anything like that down here at all.”  
  
“What- have you been looking?” Crowley demands.   
  
“Yes. Getting you a body is part of getting you out of here,” Aziraphale says patiently.   
  
Crowley laughs, sort of. It’s a really ugly sound even he can’t stand to hear, so he stops as soon as he’s able, and forces Aziraphale’s hands off of him. “You’re not putting the cart before the horse so much as you’re putting it on a high-speed rail line in front of an express train, you do realize that, right?”  
  
“I’ve talked with Madame Tracy, and she knows a few people who might be receptive to the experience,” Aziraphale continues, as though Crowley hasn’t spoken. “But you’d have to share that body with another consciousness. We could always find someone who has passed and left their body in a vegetative state, but that might cause problems if we ever ran into anyone who knew the previous occupant. Besides, I know you’ve gotten attached to this form, and there would be no way to replicate that with a human body.”  
  
Crowley stares at him. Aziraphale looks back, even-keeled and apparently perfectly serious.   
  
After a moment, Aziraphale takes another step forward.   
  
“Back off,” Crowley warns him.  
  
Aziraphale does not back off, and Crowley ends up pinned against the wall. He remembers the last time he did this to Aziraphale, back in the Apocalypse. Where did he get off calling Crowley _nice_ when they were in a former Satanic nunnery, looking for the Anti-Christ, and with Crowley already on borrowed time from cocking that up? And where does he get off now, pushing all the closer to Crowley when he was trying to keep them apart?  
  
“I’m sorry, my dear,” Aziraphale says, and for a moment the stone faced expression cracks, and he can see that he means it. “I’m so terribly sorry, but I. I can’t tell you.” His eyes dart towards the door.   
  
He has a plan, Crowley realizes with mounting horror. He has some kind of plan that he thinks might work. Something he’s going to try, maybe even soon.  
  
It’s not as though Aziraphale has never had a good idea, but normally when trying to pull off something ambitious, he has Crowley to at least hash things out with beforehand, if not be right there next to him to help deal with the unexpected. This time…  
  
This time Crowley’s just going to have to take it as it comes.   
  
“The only thing I can do right now is ask: how does a demon gets their corporations?” Aziraphale asks again.   
  
“It’s a fruit,” he tells him, tone heavy with the irony of it.  
  
“What?”  
  
“A fruit,” Crowley repeats. “Look a little like a baby’s head, tastes a lot like motor oil, eat it down to the core and you’ll have whatever body you desire, albeit with quite the case of indigestion. It grows on trees in the Phlegethon. They can sprout up anywhere, but they’re generally clustered around the falls just before you hit Malebolge.” It’s pretty deep into Hell, but not as deep as Crowley’s cell. For all he knows, Aziraphale has been passing them every time he visits without knowing what they are.  
  
“Thank you,” Aziraphale whispers. He looks about ready to collapse with relief. He even leans in towards Crowley again, a little.   
  
“I said don’t touch me,” Crowley snarls, pushing him away.   
  
This time, Aziraphale goes, looking startled. Crowley looks towards the cell door for as long as he dares, and Aziraphale gives him the barest nod in return. They’ll play this fight out to the end, then, for the benefit of anyone who might be watching.   
  
“If that’s your wish,” Aziraphale says primly.   
  
“It is,” Crowley snaps.   
  
They spend the rest of their time on opposite sides of the cell, sulking. Aziraphale puts his wings away, and the stink of sulfur and the sound of screaming is as inescapable as it is when he’s not here. They don’t speak, save for one short exchange near the end, when the hourglass has nearly wound down.   
  
“I don’t suppose you’d let me heal you up, at least?”  
  
“No.”  
  
And that’s the end of that visitation.


	7. Chapter 7

Aziraphale comes to his cell in Hell three more times.

The first time is shortly after their fight. He’s pretty sure it’s only allowed because Hastur and the rest are expecting there to be a rematch, but while not letting Aziraphale heal him had definitely sold the whole thing, it also means he’s too tired and in far too much pain to do that again.

So he lets Aziraphale heal him, that time. He lets himself be pulled in close, and lets himself have fingers that card carefully through his hair. The air Aziraphale brings with him is pure Christmas, cold and full of the scent of dead pine and overworked retail staff. Aziraphale talks a lot about the newest craze for electronic yo-yo pets that Crowley is absolutely certain the angel doesn’t actually know anything about. He doesn’t mention anything important.

It’s months before they speak again. He’s not sure how many, exactly- the three days per sleep measurement was never accurate, but now it’s not even close to real feeling enough for his delusional comfort. It’s spring again, that time: Aziraphale’s wings are choked with pollen. Crowley has just resigned himself to not hearing anything about it when Aziraphale brushes his lips against his temples as he whispers _It’ll be over soon. Hold on._

  
The third time Aziraphale isn’t coming to visit. He’s coming to rescue him, bloody and soot-stained, flaming sword in hand.

Crowley stares at him for probably a lot longer than he should have, considering. It takes a while for his brain to come back online, as it takes a lot of processing power to work through the fact that he isn’t hallucinating. “Is that. Did you get yourself a maroon suit to disguise the blood, or-”

“Can we discuss the suits at a later date?” Aziraphale asks.

“Yeah. Sure.” There’s still a layer of surreality to everything, but he feels like that’s fair, considering.

Then Crowley does a double take as he catches sight of the woman behind him. “Is that War?”

“Don’t mind me,” War says. “I’m just enjoying a stroll.”

“Didn’t you get discorporated by a twelve year old a few years back?” Crowley demands.

“Much like you, that doesn’t mean I die,” War replies, though Crowley can tell that he’s hit a nerve. “The humans can never do without me for too long.”

“My dear,” Aziraphale says, a little helplessly. “Can I ask you to stay very, very still for a moment, so I can cut that collar off you?”

Crowley stays very still, and Aziraphale cuts the collar off of him very carefully. Crowley lets the thing clatter to the ground, as all his demonic powers come rushing back.

“I got you something,” Aziraphale says, withdrawing a handkerchief from the inside pocket of his jacket.

It’s the fruit. Of course it is. Aziraphale had promised, after all.

“I haven’t eaten anything for about three years. I don’t know if that’s going to make this more likely to end in a mess, or less,” Crowley warns him.

“Will that affect your corporation?” Aziraphale asks.

“It shouldn’t, so long as I eat the thing down to the core before I throw anything up,” Crowley assures him.

“Then we can deal with it.”

It takes him a few minutes to choke the thing down- War leaves the doorway a few times, and he can hear the screaming changing in tenor for a few moments each time before she returns. The taste is, if anything, even worse than he remembers. The sound it makes as he bites into it is less a squelch and more a scream. The core looks like two finger bones fused together. Crowley sucks it clean and free of pulp as his body solidifies.

It looks the same as it had when Aziraphale had entered his cell, minus the collar and the injuries: red hair, angular bone structure, pale skin, serpent’s eyes. The sudden lack of joint pain is fantastic, but he also has the worst case of indigestion of his entire immortal life.

“Just so you know, this is worse than that time you persuaded me to try that fucking Napolean cheese,” Crowley groans.

“Epoisses de Bourgogne?”

“That’s the one.”

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale says. “Are you going to be able to walk, or should I carry you?”

“Are we going to be able to walk?” Crowley demanded. "This seems more like a running situation to me."

“They should be distracted enough, I hope,” Aziraphale offers him his hand. Crowley takes it, and lets him be pulled upright with a groan.

“Oh yeah, this is definitely going to be a problem,” he moans, doubling over almost immediately. “I am absolutely going to puke all over your fancy new suit.”

“I really do not care about the suit at all,” Aziraphale tells him, and he hands the sword off to War.

War smiles, and disappears.

Crowley turns to face Aziraphale even as Aziraphale slings one of his arms over his shoulder. “What. What the fuck, Aziraphale.”

“I’ll explain later,” Aziraphale says.

“No!” He digs his heels in. “Explain now before we go out there into-” He gestures to the door. The screaming’s changed again, but this time it’s clearly not going to be going back to normal any time soon. “-whatever that is.”

“A Second Rebellion,” Aziraphale says, with very audibly capital letters.

“What?”

“I’ll explain later, I promise I will, but- my dear. We don’t have time, we have only a small window in which we can leave.”

Crowley might have pressed a bit more, but the intestinal tract he now possesses is twisting around on itself like it’s still a snake.

“Just- trust me, please. At least until we’re back on Earth. Can you do that, Crowley?”

“I’ll trust you until the end,” Crowley says, when he can. He considers saying more, but he really feels like throwing up and it seems like time is of the essence… “Let’s go then. I’m really tired of being here.”

They make their slow, torturous way up, over Hastur's now empty corporation, past the sounds of fighting. A Second Rebellion? Sure, he knows that things have to have gotten bad, after their trick with the holy water, but he’d never thought that it would be this bad.

He pukes twice. He’s kind of surprised that there’s anything left to come up, the second time around, but there it is, splattering all over the infernal cobblestones (frozen telemarketers) of Pandemonium.

“We’re not going out by Dis, are we?” Crowley grumbles, as he tries to get his bearings. “We can’t go out by Dis. Traffic is always bloody horrible. It’s partly where I got the idea for the M25.”

“Are you seriously trying to argue with me about directions now?” Aziraphale hisses.

“I know Hell better than you,” Crowley says mulishly. He’s pretty sure he has a fever, which is not so unusual for a new corporation, but he could really have done without it. He’s all sweaty, and it’s hard to focus.

“There is one gate open to us, and it’s this way,” Aziraphale says, pulling him along.

Things go a bit blurry after that.

“Where is everyone?” Crowley asks, when it becomes obvious to him that they are, in fact, going out by Dis. “There should be people about.”

“There are people about,” Aziraphale tells him. He’s using his ‘I am an angel and therefore have boundless patience’ voice, which is how Crowley can guess that he’s asked this question before. “They’re just not paying us any attention, and there are perhaps fewer people than usual, on account of the fighting.”

He’s more or less carrying Crowley at that point. He’s not sure when that happened.

Things grow sharper towards the end. It might be the whiff of London he can taste in the air- cold and thick with car exhaust. It might be that the fucking fruit is finally done fucking with his system. It’s more likely the Archangel Uriel, decked out in all her golden finery and carrying a sword of her own, when Aziraphale has already given his away.

Aziraphale stops. For a long moment, they merely look at one another, the Archangel with her sword and the former Principality with a demon in his arms.

“Will you let us pass?” Aziraphale asks.

“As agreed,” Uriel replies, standing aside.

“What,” Crowley says.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale says, ignoring him.

“What is going on?” Crowley hisses. “Aziraphale- what agreement?” Aziraphale continues to ignore him, dragging them past the Archangel and towards the exit. “Aziraphale- what did you promise her? Answer me, bless it!”

“It’s already done, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, and then “Fuck!” as Crowley wrenches himself free of his grasp.

He staggers forwards a few steps towards the Archangel. “Oi! Uriel!”

The Archangel turns to face them.

“He’s not yours! Do you understand me?” Crowley spits. “He doesn’t belong to Heaven any more, if you think for one second that you’ll be dragging him back Upstairs, then-”

“Crowley, it’s done,” Aziraphale says, wrapping his arms around him. “It’s done, this is the end of our agreement. Passage bought and paid for- we just. We just have to get home. Please, my dear, let’s go home.”

“Should all go according to plan, neither of you should be bothered by either side for quite some time,” Uriel says.

“You and your plans,” Crowley says bitterly.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale pleads. “I just want to go home with you. Can we do that now? Please?”

“Yeah,” Crowley says after a moment. He would love to say that he and the Archangel have been having a staring contest, but he still can’t make his eyes focus well enough for that. “Yeah, let’s go home.”

And then, just a few moments later, they find themselves in front of the Downstairs Escalator, back in London. Back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, Aziraphale has a mostly good explanation for all of this...


	8. Chapter 8

Aziraphale has a small bag waiting for them in a locker with some necessities: sunglasses, boots, blazer, and a steaming hot thermos of coffee. Crowley drinks half of it in one gulp as Aziraphale miracles the filth of Hell off of them both.  
  
“What’s the date?” he asks.  
  
“March 17th, 2027,” Aziraphale replies.  
  
It’s been a bit longer than Crowley had thought, then. He puts the sunglasses on and takes another gulp of his coffee. He can deal with that later.  
  
London is loud, louder than it really should seem to him after not-quite-five years in Pandemonium. There are too many people, and they press too close. Intellectually, Crowley knows that it’s just the indifference of the city-dweller that’s behind it, but he keeps expecting there to be some kind of attack. He grabs Aziraphale’s offered hand just to keep from lashing out.  
  
“Are you doing all right?” Aziraphale asks.  
  
“Not really,” Crowley admits, leaning into him a little. “Can we hurry this up, maybe?”  
  
There’s a good two feet of space around them the rest of the way home, and they never have to wait on any stoplights. It makes the walk a bit quicker.  
  
It also makes the walk a bit quicker that they’re going to Mayfair rather than Soho, though only by a few minutes.  
  
The lights in his building are different. They burn a dimmer, whiter shade than he remembers, and they buzz at a different frequency.  
  
“They changed those sometime last month,” Aziraphale says, noticing his look. “More energy efficient. And there’s solar panels on the roof, now. And I had to have a special food waste disposal unit installed- it all goes somewhere out in the country. Soil reclamation, I think.” He punches the code into the door to Crowley’s apartment. There hadn’t been a key pad there, last time he was here. It must be new too, though Aziraphale doesn’t comment on it. “The weather’s still going crazy, of course. It was spring for about a week at the end of February, flowers blooming and everything. Now it’s winter again.”  
  
Crowley nods, filing all that information away for later, and lets Aziraphale lead him into his own flat.  
  
“I’ve done my best with the plants,” Aziraphale tells him, already sounding apologetic. “But I’m afraid I just don’t have your way with them.”  
  
Crowley leans against the wall, and doesn’t spare the plants so much as a glance. “Look, realistically speaking, the moment I hit my bed I’m going to sleep for at least a month. So, before that happens, I’m going to need that explanation.”  
  
Aziraphale pulls the door shut, probably more forcefully than intended.  
  
“Let’s sit for this, shall we?” he says.  
  
“Nope, if I sit down I’ll have the same problem. Let’s do this now.”  
  
“Here? In the front hall?”  
  
“Yes, here, and yes, now.”  
  
“Can I put the kettle on first?”  
  
“I don’t own a kettle.”  
  
“I brought mine over ages ago.”  
  
“You brought- angel, have you been _living_ here?”  
  
“More or less. I really did miss you terribly, Crowley.”  
  
Well then. “Fine. We’ll move this to the kitchen and you can fuss with your tea and then you’re going to explain.”  
  
Aziraphale nods, and heads off to the kitchen. Crowley follows him closely. No small part of him is worried that if he lets Aziraphale out of his sight he’ll never see him again.  
  
He’s prepared for Aziraphale to keep stalling. He’s not prepared for Aziraphale to say, with his back turned to him, “They made me sign a contract.”  
  
“Come again?”  
  
“Hell- or Beelzebub, or the office of Prince of Hell, rather. They made me sign a contract before I could even see you.”  
  
Crowley suddenly understands why Aziraphale wanted him to be sitting down for this. “What were the terms?” he asks.  
  
“Extremely general,” Aziraphale says, still not turning around to face him. There’s no way it’s seriously taking him this long to get the tea things together. “I’m not sure if they thought that I lacked imagination to find loopholes, or if they lacked the imagination to imagine I would find loopholes, or if they were just making sure that I had enough room to pursue every avenue, or-”  
  
“Aziraphale,” Crowley says, forcing his tone to a cutting edge. “What were the terms?”  
  
“For their part, they were to do no irreparable harm to you-”  
  
Crowley snorts, and then immediately regrets it when Aziraphale stops talking.  
  
“Yes,” Aziraphale says, putting down the little ceramic jar of sugar that he’d brought over at some point with a too-loud clink. “Quite.” He takes a deep breath, and the kettle, just set on the stove to boil, begins to whistle loudly. “Do you want any of this, dear?”  
  
“I want-” Crowley begins sharply, and then he makes himself stop.  
  
Aziraphale stands with his back to him, his shoulders hunched and miserable. Crowley makes himself walk over to him, and place a hand on his arm.  
  
Aziraphale starts, which is pretty much what he feared would happen, but before he can pull away Aziraphale leans against him, and towards him.  
  
“Hey,” Crowley says softly. “You got me out.”  
  
“It took me a while,” Aziraphale replies. “I can’t help but think that if our positions were reversed, you’d have wiled my way out of Heaven within the year.”  
  
“Flatterer,” Crowley says, because he is, and shamelessly so, too. Hell was designed to allow angels cast out from Heaven in; Heaven does not so easily abide demons, and they both know that.  
  
“You’d have thought of something,” Aziraphale insists. “I just. Well. I really felt like I was just sort of muddling through, hoping that something would stick.”  
  
“That’s kind of how it works, wiling by the seat of your pants,” Crowley told him. “Or thwarting. Or however you did it. I just- I need to _know_, Aziraphale. The longer I don’t know the more I’m going to worry about it.”  
  
“Are you sure you can’t rest first?” Aziraphale asks.  
  
“Yeah. I’m sure.” He could try, but he has the feeling that he would only have nightmares. Not that he won’t be having nightmares anyway, in all likelihood, but they will be way worse if he doesn’t have any kind of concrete information about how, exactly, he is not in Hell right now.  
  
There’s a slight change in the air, and then there’s a single piece of paper on the kitchen island.  
  
“That’s the contract,” Aziraphale says. “I’m going to make some tea, and then we’ll talk. Do you want any?”  
  
“Make mine a coffee and you’ve got a deal.”  
  
It takes Aziraphale a while to actually make coffee in addition to tea, enough time for Crowley to pick up the contract and read it through it six times or so.  
  
“Okay,” he says, as Aziraphale places his coffee in front of him. “Okay, so I can see where you’re coming from. It says here that you need to establish contact with the Archangels and bring their long-awaited war back.”  
  
“Notably, while the ‘long-awaited’ does imply that they want the war outlined in the Great Plan, it does not directly state it,” Aziraphale points out. “Since War herself is a fairly integral part of said Plan, I was able to get her in through the front gate easily enough. And lo, I brought them War.”  
  
“And your whatever with Uriel also technically fulfills the clause about contacting Archangels,” Crowley says.  
  
“Exactly.”  
  
“And… that’s all very clever, but that doesn’t necessarily _mean_ anything. There’s a reason the commendation they gave me for forced arbitration was the size of the one they gave me for the Spanish Inquisition. They adopted those same practices. Beelzebub is the one who gets to decide who has the final say as to whether the contract has been fulfilled or not, and they aren’t going to pick anyone sympathetic.”  
  
“I know,” Aziraphales says. “But you might notice that the seal on it is for their office, rather than themself, personally. Should this rebellion succeeded- and I do believe that it will- then their successor will void the contract as per our agreement. And even if it doesn’t succeed, they can’t fulfill their end of the bargain, because you are no longer in Hell and I’m not letting you go back. Either way, that contract is as good as voided.”  
  
Crowley wants, desperately, to believe that’s enough. With the memory of Aziraphaleshowing up at the door of his cell stained in soot and blood, flaming sword in hand, emblazoned onto his eyelids, he almost can believe it.  
  
But he’s also belonged to Hell for a very long time, and he’s also believed himself free of them before. Leaps of faith have always been his downfall. He’s not too keen on getting burned again.  
  
“Who’s leading it, this Second Rebellion?” he asks.  
  
“Lilith.”  
  
“Lilith,” Crowley repeats, suddenly glad that he hasn’t actually touched his coffee. That is definitely a spit take worthy name. “_The_ Lilith?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
“I do remember her from the Garden,” Aziraphale says. “She’s a bit difficult to forget.”  
  
Well that’s the understatement of all eternity. “Isn’t she, you know, all into baby killing these days?”  
  
“Yes, she gave us that speech when Uriel set up the meeting. And I just- you know how, sometimes, Downstairs would contact you through the radio in the Bentley, I would sit there very quietly until you could cut the connection?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“And how, on some of those occasions, you ended up having to rant your way through this whole litany of terrible deeds you’d done until they left you alone?” Aziraphale adds.  
  
Crowley thinks he knows where this is going now, and he’s not sure he likes it. “You’re joking.”  
  
“It was all I could think about while she was talking. It was- it just gave me a very similar feeling to listening to you use your alleged involvement in the Spanish Inquisition to make other demons back off.”  
  
“You didn’t tell her that, did you?” Crowley demands. If Lilith isn’t trustworthy- what is he even saying, if she isn’t trustworthy, if she decides to fuck them over, more like-  
  
“I didn’t tell her about the Spanish Inquisition. I didn’t even directly state which demon I knew who had also been incorrectly assigned the blame for something evil- though, obviously, the list of possible demons is very small.”  
  
“Do you even know any other demons than me?” Crowley asks.  
  
“Not on friendly terms, no,” Aziraphale admits. “Anyway, at the time I just told her that I didn’t believe that Sudden Infant Death Syndrome was any doing of hers.”  
  
“I bet she loved that.”  
  
“She slammed me into the wall, which is how I knew I was on the right track,” Aziraphale says.  
  
“She _what_?” Crowley says, even knowing that he’s done the same exact thing to Aziraphale a good seven or eight dozen times, over all the years they’ve known one another.  
  
“She was scared,” Aziraphale says, smiling slightly, apparently remembering all those wall slamming incidents with more fondness than Crowley does. “A demon can get in a lot of trouble for doing the right thing, you know. Or failing to do the wrong thing, as it happens.” He smiles more broadly. “You should have seen Uriel’s face when I got her to admit it.”  
  
“Uriel’s… face?” Crowley asks.  
  
“Yes, I- well. Let’s just say that, apparently, there are at least two other people out there who are worse at talking about their feelings than we are.”  
  
They still haven’t talked about their feelings, not really. Not is any way that gets them beyond admitting they have them. Crowley chugs his coffee in lieu of pointing that out.  
  
“Right,” he says, holding out his cup for a refill. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, guys! My Internet cut out Saturday afternoon and it took this long for it to get repaired.

Aziraphale walks him through it. First, through fretting about which Archangel to get in contact with, going around and around about it in his head, talking himself into and out of various choices on the grounds that this one might be able to help, but what if that one would be more useful but Aziraphale was letting his own personal feelings blind him? Eventually, he just went with his gut, and contacted Uriel. This proved to be a wise decision.  
  
“She apologized. That was pretty much the first thing she did, once we had each determined that we were speaking privately,” Aziraphale says, looking glumly into his tea cup. He’s made it his usual way- just this side of overly-steeped, five cubes of sugar and a swirl of honey with a generous portion of cream. He also hasn’t touched it. “God hasn’t spoken to any of the angels in a terribly long time it seems, aside from the Metatron. Allegedly. She has her doubts about that, not that she ever felt she could voice them before. And then came my execution. You and I know how that worked, but to her…” He sighs. “From her perspective, I was as good as thrown into a fiery furnace, and then _saved_. It looked like _divine intervention_, especially next to your also-miraculous survival.”  
  
“So, she’s sorry for trying to kill you because God is on your side?” Crowley asks.  
  
“_Our_ side,” Aziraphale corrects swiftly. “And… it’s more like she’s sorry for not having the courage to voice her doubts sooner. She’s sorry not to have acted when she knew what was happening was wrong, whether it was written or not. And she wanted to try doing it now.”  
  
Crowley’s not sure he trusts that. What he does trust is some good old-fashioned realpolitik, and as it happens, Uriel had brought that to the table along her apologies.  
  
“She wants to change to the way things are being done in Heaven, but as it stands now, she has relatively little power,” Aziraphale explains. “Should the Second Rebellion succeed, then not only will she have a direct line to the new Prince of Hell, but she’ll have ousted Gabriel’s main contact, and likely the other Archangels’ contacts as well. It’ll give her some leverage to work with.”  
  
Aziraphale gets distracted here, talking about all these grand plans Uriel has for her newfound power. Crowley half-listens, finishing his coffee and pouring himself another refill. Even if Uriel hasn’t sold Aziraphale a bill of goods, it still doesn’t sound like Heaven under her control would be much more his scene than it is under Gabriel and Michael’s command. It _does_ sound like the sort of place that might let them live in relative peace here on Earth, though. And it definitely sounds like the sort of place that would never order Aziraphale to walk into a swirling vortex of hellfire.  
  
He’s all for it. Even just that last part would be great- provided she can pull it off.  
  
“So, when did Lilith get involved?” he asks when Aziraphale takes a moment to breathe.  
  
“Oh, not very long after we began to meet. We knew we’d need someone on the inside, and Lilith is apparently her main point of contact,” Aziraphale tells him. “It went how it went.”  
  
“You accused her of being a big fake, she slammed you into a wall, somehow you all walked away as friends?” Crowley checks.  
  
“Well, I wouldn’t say friends, precisely. We all left having a common goal,” Aziraphale clarifies. “Besides, I’m not sure friends is the right word for Uriel and Lilith.” He waves his free hand over his tea, reheating it. “Watching the two of them, it was all very- nostalgic, in a mortifying way.”  
  
“Mortifying?”  
  
“I made you wait such a long time, to let you know that I loved you back,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley’s heart stops.  
  
It’s not the first time he’s said it. The first time he said it was that night- the first night of the rest of their lives, or so they had thought. Crowley had been debating between pushing his luck and inviting himself over to the bookshop for a drink or giving Aziraphale a more open-ended offer of a ride, and then Aziraphale had turned to him and said “I love you.”  
  
Crowley’s heart had stopped then too. He might have thought that he’d misheard, even, but then the angel had continued with “I don’t quite know what to do with it. But I regretted not telling you when I finally acknowledged it to myself, and I regretted not telling you when I gave you that thermos of holy water, and I especially regretted not telling you last night. So I’m telling you now. I love you.”  
  
Crowley’s heart had stopped again. If he’s being honest with himself, it’s probably going to take a century or two of hearing that before he can fully train his heart to stop it with the stopping.  
  
“And I didn’t even have the excuse of thinking you went around murdering babies,” Aziraphale is saying in the here and now. “I was just- I was scared, so I buried it.”  
  
“Did learning that Lilith wasn’t going around killing babies clear things up all of a sudden for them?” Crowley asks, a little curious in spite of himself.  
  
“I wish,” Aziraphale says fervently, finally taking a sip of tea. “They both appear to be waiting to see if they can pull this Second Rebellion off without dying before they say anything to one another. Which I’ve counselled them each against! Benefits of experience, and all that. But just- eugh.” He takes a larger sip of tea, his nose wrinkling in disgust.  
  
“Worse than us, you said,” Crowley teases.  
  
“Yes, considerably,” Aziraphale says emphatically. “At least I can say it now!”  
  
“I love you too,” Crowley says, because he can say it too. The problem they have, right now, is that they’ve been able to say it for years, but they’ve never been able to say anything more about it. They haven’t been able to articulate what they want to do with it. Crowley has a few ideas- more than a few, he has a few thousand years worth of fantasies in varying levels of detail- but he doesn’t want to be the one to put them out there first. He doesn’t want to push too far, too fast. He doesn’t want to go back to not being able to say it.  
  
Aziraphale is smiling, and seems quite content to stay leaning against the kitchen counter, tea in hand, and watch Crowley lean against the kitchen island, coffee in hand.  
  
“So, how did the subject of fomenting a Second Rebellion in Hell come up?” Crowley asks.  
  
“Oh, it was Lilith’s main goal from the start. She’d been planning it for a while, since long before our executions. Since before Armageddon kicked off, even. She even speculated that the timing was because Satan had gotten wind of how many people were dissatisfied and knew that Armageddon was a good way of quelling the unrest.”  
  
“No use in trying to change a system when the system is about to change everything for you,” Crowley says.  
  
“Precisely. Except, of course, Armageddon didn’t happen, leaving the denizens of Hell with unfulfilled promises of change on top of their current unpleasant situation.” Aziraphale hesitates. “During your execution, Beelzebub had said that there might be riots. Listening to Lilith discuss things, I began to understand why.”  
  
“You probably didn’t help,” Crowley said. “Taking a holy water bath right in front of everyone, asking for a towel from the Archangel Michael…”  
  
“And a rubber ducky from the assembled Lords of Hell,” Aziraphale says.  
  
Crowley snorts. “Yeah, that probably didn’t help cement their authority any.”  
  
“So, that was the long-awaited war they so kindly did not specify in that contract, and a very handy distraction for breaking you out of prison,” Aziraphale says. “I wanted my sword back, for at least long enough to break that collar off of you, and Lilith wanted War, to ensure that people would actually fight, and not just… despair.” Aziraphale takes another sip of tea. “I didn’t realize how much of Hell was just hopelessness and despair. Everyone was so _angry_ when I went down to Hell for your trial. I thought it was always like that.”  
  
“Is everyone in Heaven always stuck up themselves and ready to cheer for your death?” Crowley asks.  
  
“It’s not uncommon,” Aziraphale replies, startling a laugh out of Crowley. There are days- days when he hasn’t seen the inside of Hell for a while, so this is definitely not one of them- when he can believe that he got off easy, leaving Heaven when he did.  
  
“So, in exchange for her participation, War gets your sword,” Crowley guesses.  
  
Aziraphale nods. “For the duration of the Second Rebellion. Then Uriel gets it and puts it back into storage.”  
  
“Ties it up nicely, I suppose, provided everyone does their part,” Crowley says. He’s drumming his fingers on his cup. It’s too neat, is the thing. He feels like there’s something missing, something that’s about to swing back around and bite him. Something he can’t quite put his finger on.  
  
“If the Second Rebellion fails, Uriel has promised to bring the sword to me,” Aziraphale says. “I’m not letting them take you a second time.”  
  
Crowley snorts. “There wasn’t much letting the first time. I got shot.”  
  
“Believe me, I recall,” Aziraphale says shortly.  
  
Crowley winces, remembers the burning bookshop, and winces again.  
  
“I just mean that I don’t think there was anything you could have done,” Crowley says, trying to placate. “A flaming sword is just a sword, in the end. It’s not going to stop a bullet.”  
  
“I could have listened to you,” Aziraphale says. “You told me that you felt like someone someone was following us.”  
  
“I’d been telling you that for _months_, angel. I was jumping at shadows.”  
  
“Or they’d been following us for months and I’d dismissed your concerns out of hand because I didn’t want to deal with the possibility that they would come for us so soon!” Aziraphale is very nearly shouting.  
  
“No, I’m pretty sure I was jumping at shadows,” Crowley replies, trying his best not to shout.  
  
“And then one of those shadows shot you!” Okay, apparently they are shouting now. “And you were dead, Crowley! You were _gone_! Before I could so much as attempt to heal the damage you bled out right there in the street!”  
  
“Probably for the best that you didn’t,” Crowley says. “I mean, people aren’t generally shot in broad daylight in the middle of London any more. We probably drew in quite a crowd. It would have been a lot of work, to alter everyone’s memories like that.”  
  
“I already did have to alter everyone’s memories,” Aziraphale bites off sourly. “I struck an officer of the law and he flew clear across the street and into a parked car. Broke six of his ribs upon impact.”  
  
Crowley takes a moment to turn this new information over in his mind. “You punched a cop.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Is there video of that?”  
  
“You want to watch a video of me, covered in your blood, accosting a human because he tried to touch your corpse and I took a complete and utter leave of my senses,” Aziraphale says flatly.  
  
“Not when you put it like that, I don’t,” Crowley admits.  
  
“Good, because every camera on the street suffered a malfunction that day, if they knew what they were for,” Aziraphale says fiercely.  
  
“Still. You punched a cop.” It was, if anything, even weirder to say that the second time.  
  
“Yes, dear. I punched a cop.” Aziraphale sighs heavily.  
  
“Do you think you could do that again, only in front of me and under better circumstances?” Crowley asks.  
  
Aziraphale stares at him, expression somewhere at the intersection between annoyed, confused, and fond. Crowley stares back, and resolutely does not grin.  
  
“Let’s see how rowdy things get at Pride this year,” he says at long last, and Crowley indulges in his first proper cackle in _years_.  
  
The anxiety hasn’t lessened at all by the time he stops, Aziraphale’s expression now firmly annoyed.

“What’s our play if Heaven comes knocking?” Crowley asks.  
  
“They shouldn’t, not until the Second Rebellion ends. If it goes in our favor, then the balance of power should shift towards Uriel, who will keep their attention off of us. If it fails, then we should probably be prepared to run anyway.”  
  
“Right, right,” Crowley mutters. “Run to where, exactly?”  
  
“I’ve heard Alpha Centauri is lovely this time of year,” Aziraphale says, which just means he hasn’t put any effort into thinking about it at all.  
  
“It'd better be. I put a lot of effort into making that place look good,” Crowley grumbles. Unfortunately, he’s never actually been able to think of a place that would place them completely out of the grasps of their former employers, but another planet entirely seems as likely as anything to at least give them enough time to plan for something properly.  
  
What else is he missing? There’s something else, there’s something more-  
  
“They didn’t ask about how we survived our executions, did they?” Crowley asks.  
  
“Uriel seems content to presume it to be the work of the Almighty,” Aziraphale says.  
  
“But Lilith isn’t,” Crowley guesses, when he says nothing more.  
  
Aziraphale winces and shakes his head.  
  
“You didn’t tell her, did you?” Crowley demands.  
  
“No,” Aziraphale says firmly. “I did tell her that if they were ever in need of it, she and Uriel could probably work it out themselves, but nothing more.”  
  
Which is more than enough information for them to work it out, if you ask Crowley. After all, what did it take for the two of them to realize it could be done- _choose your faces wisely_, was it, Agnes?  
  
He’s about to point that out when something else hits him.  
  
“Oh, shit,” Crowley says, glowering down at the dregs of his third cup of coffee. Fourth, if you counted the thermos.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I’ve just realized. New body, absolutely no chemical tolerances,” Crowley says. “Aziraphale- I’ve never had caffeine before.”

“Ah,” says Aziraphale, who had made all of Crowley’s coffees to his usual pre-discorporation standards. “That could be a problem.”  
  
Crowley nods. He never quite managed to get the hang on purging caffeine the way he can purge alcohol.  
  
It’s probably unfair to blame the way his skin is prickling all over and his heart is trying to push its way out of his throat all on the coffee. He is absolutely going to do that anyway.  
  
“This is bad news for the whole exhaustion thing,” Crowley remarks. “How much of my wine did you drink while you were squatting here?”  
  
“None,” Aziraphale says, sounding insulted. “I brought my own, thank you very much.”  
  
“Well, pour me some of your best vintage then,” Crowley says, holding out his cup. “We’ll call it rent.”  
  
Aziraphale ignores his empty coffee mug in favor of getting a clean glass and filing it with tap water.  
  
“Wine, angel,” Crowley says. “Unless you’re going to transmute that-”  
  
Aziraphale rolls his eyes so loudly that it constitutes an interruption all on its own. “Water first, and then wine. Let’s not overwhelm your new liver, shall we?”  
  
Crowley grumbles but accepts both the water and the advice. “Your very best vintage, Aziraphale. I will accept no substitutes.”  
  
Aziraphale rolls his eyes again, but does end up pouring him a very nice glass of Chateau d’Yquem 1985, which while sweeter than he’d normally go for does actually go pretty well with the lingering coffee taste in his mouth.  
  
“Any more questions, dear?” Aziraphale asks.  
  
Crowley focuses on the taste of the wine in his mouth. He focuses on the creases pressing themselves in Aziraphale’s new suit before his eyes. He focuses on everything but the reasons why he’s decided to blame the caffeine for this.  
  
“Yeah,” Crowley says. “How are the kids?”  
  
The kids are fine. The literal kids are only sort of just barely still literal kids, and all headed off to university. Crowley almost breaks down laughing at the idea of Aziraphale interacting with Warlock without Crowley to act as a buffer; Aziraphale acts very wounded, even as he proclaims that he is much better with the young adult set than actual children. And then he admits that he told Warlock that Crowley has been in a coma this whole time, and he does break down laughing so hard that he nearly winds up on the floor. The non literal kids are doing just as well. Newt and Anathema apparently had one of their own already (Jacinto, he decides, is named after him because of course that’s what the J stands for) and Shadwell and Madame Tracey are still ticking along as well, probably because he and Aziraphale might have accidentally doubled up on blessings of long life and good fortune for those two before they left Tadfield after the Apocalypse didn’t go off as planned. In their defense, they had thought they were going to die shortly, and it’s too late to take it back now.  
  
Aziraphale is going through some story about Madame Tracey winning tickets to go on a cruise to Iceland of all the silly places you could go on a cruise to when the wine finally starts to win out over the caffeine. He can barely concentrate during the story. Standing is becoming a bit of a chore.  
  
“Crowley?” Aziraphale says, waving his hand in front of his face.  
  
“I’m awake!” Crowley protests reflexively.  
  
Aziraphale doesn't’ t laugh at him, but the expression on his face tells Crowley that it’s a near thing.  
  
“Probably won’t be for much longer,” he admits.  
  
“Come on, let’s get you to bed,” Aziraphale says, one arm wrapped around Crowley’s shoulder. He can probably walk on his own. He’s not going to mention that to Aziraphale. “I changed the sheets just this morning- the old ones were getting a bit dusty, I’m afraid.”  
  
“And here I was picturing you sleeping in my bed,” Crowley teases.  
  
“I would never!” Aziraphale protests. “I mean- not without your permission, that is.”  
  
“You were already squatting in my flat, I wouldn’t have cared about the bed,” Crowley says.  
  
“I, well-” Aziraphale splutters. Crowley decides not to offend his sense of modesty further and miracles himself into a pair of boxer shorts when he miracles himself out of his clothes. He can feel him blushing anyway.  
  
The bed is the bed. Minus the sheets being some kind of dark grey on black striped pattern, it’s exactly as he remembers it. He’s really missed having a bed.  
  
Aziraphale still has an arm around him, for a moment, before he seems to realize that they have, in fact, arrived at the bed. He starts a bit, and jumps back.  
  
“I’ll just- erm,” Aziraphale says, backing out of the room. “Well. I’ll wake you as soon as I have news about how the Second Rebellion fared.”  
  
“Yeah. You’ll, uh. Feel free to hang around?” Crowley asks.  
  
“Yes. I’ll be right here if you need me,” Aziraphale says, now practically out of the door.  
  
“Aziraphale,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale stops backing out of the room.  
  
_Don’t go too fast._ That’s been the rule for decades. If you go too fast, he’s just going to flat-out leave.  
  
But Aziraphale went to Hell for him, again and again, for years. Aziraphale nearly kissed him, in that cell he expected to be left in until after even Hastur tired of him. They might need to run, soon. What’s too fast, in the face of all of that?  
  
“Is there any chance of a kiss goodnight?” Crowley asks.  
  
Aziraphale comes to him so fast that Crowley is absolutely certain that he used a miracle. Still, Aziraphale hesitates before taking that last step into Crowley’s personal space, and again before sliding his fingers along the side of Crowley’s jaw to cup the back of his head.  
  
“Are you sure?” Aziraphale asks.  
  
There’s not a great deal of difference in their heights. He just has to tilt his head down the tiniest bit as Aziraphale tilts his head up and their lips will meet. “Absolutely sure.”  
  
Then they kiss.  
  
It’s not everything he ever wanted out of their first kiss. He’s too tired, and somewhere beneath all of that he’s _scared_, and the way Aziraphale trembles isn’t an entirely happy thing either. Still, it’s not bad, as far as first kisses go.  
  
“Stay,” Crowley asks. His voice cracks a little, despite his best efforts. “Stay with me, until I fall asleep.”  
  
“Of course,” Aziraphale says.  
  
Crowley gets into bed. Aziraphale’s shoes untie themselves and stay on the floor as Aziraphale slides under the covers with him.  
  
“All right?” he asks, trying to settle.  
  
Crowley throws an arm, a leg, and most of the rest of his body over him. Aziraphale is warm and soft, and one of his hands immediately starts running through his hair even as his other arm presses Crowley closer. “Yeah. You’ll do.”


	10. Chapter 10

Crowley wakes with a steaming hot cup of coffee on the bedside table and Aziraphale’s fingers running through his hair. For a half a minute or so before he remembers why he’s being woken up, it’s pretty much ideal.  
  
“Did they win?” He mumbles into his coffee.  
  
“Yes. After twenty-six days, the Second Rebellion has ended in a roaring success. Uriel and Lilith are here with all the necessary paperwork. I thought you might want to be here for the debrief,” Azirahale says.  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” he wrinkles his nose at his coffee. “Did you just make me half-caff?”  
  
“No, Crowley. That’s a regular strength coffee, to help your new body adjust.”  
  
“Well I hate it,” Crowley says, chugging the rest down anyway. With a snap he’s dressed and presentable.  
  
“You’ve changed back,” he notes as he takes a second look at Aziraphale.  
  
“I beg your pardon?”  
  
“Your suit. It’s back to your usual,” Crowley says. “You’re back to your usual.”  
  
Aziraphale is: cream and tan and tartan, well over a century out of date in terms of cut and fit, well-worn and painstakingly repaired. He looks a lot more like himself, now.  
  
“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale says. “It’s been a relief, being able to take those hideous things off and not have to put them back on again.”  
  
It’ll be good to never see him in those clothes again too.  
  
Uriel and Lilith are sitting together on his couch. And they’re not quite sitting together on his couch too. Crowley remembers that constant calculus- how close is too close, how far can I go before it feels like too far. It’s bloody exhausting to think about now.  
  
“I see what you mean about the mortification,” he says to Aziraphale.  
  
Aziraphale shrugs with the sort of smile that says _I told you so_ very loudly. Uriel very determinedly looks as though none of this has anything to do with her. Lilith looks between the two of them, unimpressed.  
  
Lilith also looks much as he remembers her looking, when they’d briefly met before trying their luck in the Garden. She’s wearing clothes now, of course: what looks like a brown sundress over leggings and a turtleneck. He wonders idly if that’s considered fashionable these days, and then realizes with a shock that he has no idea what people are wearing these days. He'd barely paid any attention to the clothing people had been wearing on the way back, and he's been out of circulation for years.   
  
She’s also wearing a hat, one of those dorky knitted things with ear flaps. Normally he’d comment, but he knows it’s covering those little tufts of feathers she has coming out of her ears. He’s got his sunglasses on for much the same reason.  
  
Uriel looks much the same as she usually does when not on a celestial plane, all her golden splendor tucked away and leaving behind a youngish woman in a pale grey suit and a ruffle-necked shirt. They make a stark contrast to one another, but then again, the same can be said about Aziraphale and him.  
  
At some point, Aziraphale brought his couch over from the back of the bookshop and set it across from Crowley’s own couch. They sit on that, he and Aziraphale, and quite close together too.  
  
“You’ve got something for us?” Crowley asks, lacing his fingers together with Aziraphale’s just because he can. He could probably get away with sitting on Aziraphale’s _lap_, at this point, but if things suddenly go south it’ll be a lot easier to fight and/or run if they’re not literally on top of one another.  
  
Lilith pulls a stack of folders from the briefcase at her feet.  
  
“As promised,” she says, and drops the largest folder on the table. “First: all copies of the contract between the former Principality Aziraphale and Hell. It took a lot to find out where Beelzebub hid them all, so you’re welcome.”  
  
“Thank you,” Aziraphale says obligingly as he thumbs through the contracts.  
  
“Don’t mention it, seriously,” Lilith says, even as she drops the next folder on the table. “Here is your official notice that the terms of the contract have been fulfilled, and also that Hell considers the contract null and void. You can pick one or you can take both, it all amounts to the same thing for us.”  
  
“Don’t mind if I do,” Crowley says, taking that one. It’s an immense relief, to see the oil-slick smudge of a VOID stamp, just barely legible on the very first page. He flips through to the second version, noting the two seals: Lilith’s personal one, a sigil made out of cuneiform and owl eyes, and the official seal of the Prince of Hell.  
  
“You’ve taken over from Beelzebub, then?” he asks.  
  
“Yes,” Lilith says, “They’re not dead, of course. But they’re no longer in power. It’ll be a long time before they can do anything but buzz. Which brings me to this last business: an official agreement of noninterference from Hell.”  
  
She places the last folder on the table. Both Aziraphale and Crowley stare at it, startled.  
  
“There is one from Heaven as well,” Uriel says, reaching into her jacket and pulling out a near-identical looking folder. That, too, goes on the table between them.  
  
“That wasn’t in our agreement,” Aziraphale points out, after another moment of shocked staring.  
  
“No,” Uriel agrees.  
  
“But it was in ours,” Lilith says, inclining her head towards Uriel.  
  
Crowley and Aziraphale look at one another. Neither one of them makes a move towards the new folders.  
  
“Why?” Crowley asks, because one of them has to.  
  
“You’re more trouble than you’re worth,” Uriel says.  
  
“I thought that was the understanding last time,” Aziraphale says. “After our executions failed.”  
  
“It was an unspoken understanding, at best,” Lilith replies. “Now it’s in writing. You don’t bother us, we don’t bother you. No one in Hell wants to risk one of you starting another Rebellion because certain parties couldn’t leave well enough alone.”  
  
“And no one in Heaven wants to risk it either, given the recent events in Hell,” Uriel adds.  
  
Aziraphale takes Heaven’s offer, opens the folder, and frowns. “This is Michael’s seal.”  
  
“She was persuaded that things were fragile enough, post-Apocalypse, that we shouldn’t go borrowing trouble,” Uriel says. “None of the other Archangels quite know how to react to the Second Rebellion. They just know that it inconvenienced them, and they don’t want to face it themselves.”  
  
“Meanwhile, you’re planning your own power grab, under the illusion of preventing a power grab,” Crowley points out. “That’s clever, I like that.”  
  
“If I do it right, it’ll be less of a Rebellion and more of a Reformation,” Uriel demurs. “It should make less of a mess, that way.”  
  
Aziraphale makes a noise. Uriel and Lilith frown at him.  
  
“You might want to talk with someone who lived through the Thirty Years’ War before you decide that Reformation is an entirely peaceful term,” he explains.  
  
Crowley snorts. “What was it Gabriel said about kidnapping you for your execution? _An extraordinary rendition?_ I don’t think they’ll be much fussed about meanings behind the words, so long as they look pretty.”  
  
He picks up the noninterference agreement from Hell and gives it a look. It’s a short document, stating pretty much exactly as Uriel and Lilith have said, with a few provisions for either side making benign contact and the option to renegotiate under certain conditions. It’s signed with both seals for both Lilith personally and the office she now occupies, again. There are also two blank spaces clearly meant for their own seals.  
  
“We’ve got to sign this before it’s valid,” Crowley says.  
  
“It’s much the same for this one,” Aziraphale confirms.  
  
They switch. Heaven’s noninterference agreement is exactly the same as Hell’s, just with the demonic language switched to angelic, the Prince of Hell's seals replaced with the Archangel General Michael's, and the comic sans font to times new roman. Crowley reaches out, trying to sense any kind of hidden text or clause. He finds nothing there but the sense that Aziraphale is doing the exact same thing.  
  
“Hmm,” Aziraphale says at last.  
  
“Yep,” Crowley agrees.  
  
They sign, of course. The papers have copies, which they also sign, just in case. Uriel and Lilith take their leave, and that just leaves the two of them and a boatload of celestial paperwork.  
  
_We’re free,_ he tries telling himself. _We did it, we’re free of them for good._ He has even less success than he’d had after they’d switched bodies back.  
  
“Let’s take care of these, shall we?” Aziraphale says, and suddenly there’s a fire place in Crowley’s living room crackling away. They keep the voided contract, the notice of fulfillment, and the noninterference agreements; Crowley takes great pleasure in feeding the copies of the original contract Beelzebub made into the fire piece by piece.  
  
Aziraphale disappears briefly and returns with a small pile of clothing.  
  
“Are you going to burn those suits?” Crowley asks.  
  
“Yes,” Aziraphale says shortly, already feeding the maroon jacket into the flames.  
  
“You know, I kind of liked the walnut one,” Crowley says as Aziraphale makes to throw that one into the fire.  
  
Aziraphale turns to him, startled. “Well! I, uh-”  
  
Crowley laughs. “Relax, angel. I’m just teasing you.”  
  
Aziraphale rolls his eyes and balls the trousers up before throwing them into the flames.  
  
He watches Aziraphale dispose of them for a while longer, before getting up. Twenty-six days was close enough to a month. He’s not tired anymore. Or, at least, he’s not as exhausted as he had been when he’d first come home.  
  
They’re free, he from Hell and Aziraphale from Heaven. There’s paperwork to prove it and everything.  
  
“I’m going to check on the plants,” Crowley says.  
  
Aziraphale winces. “Well… I did my best, but you might want to brace for disappointment.”  
  
Crowley does brace for it: for the stench of root-rot, the sight of yellowed leaves, and probably more than a few plants missing altogether, that is. He’s not prepared to walk into his conservatory and be hit with an overwhelming sense of relief.  
  
It’s not from him either. Oh, he’s glad to see his plants- and his collection is in much better condition than Aziraphale had prepared him for- but he’s not relieved. _They’re_ relieved, leaves reaching out to greet him as he enters. One of the lilies even breaks out into bloom.  
  
“Did Aziraphale take good care of you while I was gone?” He’s about to tell them that they shouldn’t expect such gentle treatment from here on out, when they all start to shake.  
  
He watches them for a moment in disbelief.  
  
“Are you afraid of the angel?” he asks them. They shake harder.  
  
“Hang tight a moment,” he tells them, and backtracks back into the living room, calling out as he does “Aziraphale? What the bloody buggering fuck did you do to my plants?”  
  
Aziraphale looks embarrassed, practically ashamed. “I- it was only the one time.”  
  
“The one time you did what?”  
  
“Well, it was just- I’d just come back from Hell and you were- it had been particularly bad, that time, I just-”  
  
“You just what?”  
  
“I lost my temper. There was a plant with very broad leaves that kept _shedding_ and I just lost my temper and I- I- I smote it!”  
  
“You smote,” Crowley repeats. “One of my plants.”  
  
Aziraphale nods miserably. Crowley throws back his head and laughs.  
  
He laughs for a very long time, until he falls back against the wall in an effort to keep on his feet, and until that fails and he ends up curled up on the floor, and until Aziraphale comes over to him and wraps an arm around him. That’s when he realizes that he’s not so much laughing as crying anymore.  
  
“I’m so dreadfully sorry, my dear,” Aziraphale says, once Crowley has gotten ahold of himself.  
  
“I’m not- it’s not about the plants,” Crowley says. “It’s not even about the _smiting_, it’s just-”  
  
He’d been jumping at shadows, before. Just because someone did, actually, end up discorporating him doesn’t make it less true. And he’d known he was being ridiculous, and Aziraphale had known he was being ridiculous, and they aren’t going to have that this time. Aziraphale would be jumping at shadows too, and unlike Crowley when he did things it was hardly ever with any acknowledgement of how silly they were.  
  
“Let’s go somewhere,” Crowley says.  
  
“A table at the Ritz can open up at any moment,” Aziraphale says.  
  
“No, not- I don’t mean for _lunch_, angel,” he turns around to face Aziraphale more fully, and reaches out to cup his face. Aziraphale leans into his touch and, _oh_, he likes that, he likes being able to feel how Aziraphale feels the same pull he does, and is rendered just as helpless by it. He takes a moment to bask, before continuing. “I mean London. Let’s leave London.”  
  
“And go where? Alpha Centauri?” Aziraphale asks.  
  
“If you like,” Crowley says. “Or we could go to Paris, rent some cozy little room above a cafe or something. Fix up some moldering ruin of manor house in Greece or Italy or Spain. _Somebody_, I haven’t had a stay in Spain that didn’t end in tears since the Almoravids took over. Let’s take a whirlwind tour of Japan, let’s rent a bleeding _seaside cottage_, let’s just- let’s get out of here. Let’s be somewhere else, somewhere they haven’t come to visit us. Somewhere for just us. Let’s _go_, and stay gone for a decade at least.” They can come back when London feels safe enough to be home again.  
  
Aziraphale looks at him for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Finally he nods, rubbing the skin of his cheek against Crowley’s palm. “That’s not a bad idea.”  
  
“But?”  
  
“But I don’t know how to choose where to go,” Aziraphale says. “Much less where to stay.”  
  
Crowley smiles. “Well, we don’t have to decide right now. We don’t even have to decide soon. We can bounce around a bit.” He smiles with a little more of an edge, and looks at Aziraphale through his eyelashes. “Can I tempt you into a tour of all the vaguely-functional democracies of the world?”  
  
Aziraphale smiles back. “Temptation accomplished, you wiley old serpent.”


	11. Deleted Scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is something of a deleted scene, which I'd mostly written into the last chapter before figuring out that it didn't quite fit with where I wanted the last chapter to go. Still, it's got some pretty fun lines, and some more Uriel/Lilith, which I got weirdly attached to, so I figured I would post this for anyone who wanted to read it.

Crowley snorts. “What was it Gabriel said about kidnapping you for your execution? _An extraordinary rendition?_ I don’t think they’ll be much fussed about meanings behind the words, so long as they look pretty.”

Uriel frowns. “It’s a performance.”

“Yes, exactly!” Crowley says, waving an arm at her. 

“No, I mean- a rendition. It’s a performance. You know, like your last bow?”

Crowley squints at her. He’s not the only one. The only one who isn’t squinting at Uriel is Uriel herself. 

“It was supposed to be ironic, I thought?” Uriel continues. “Since you hate musicals?”

Aziraphale ends up speaking first. “I don’t hate musicals.”

“You don’t?” Uriel asks, surprised. 

“That’s your first reaction?” Lilith asks. 

“No, I don’t,” Aziraphale says, ignoring Lilith for the time being. “I hate _The Sound of Music_, now, along with most of Roger and Hammerstein’s work, since it’s been so oversaturated. It's not musicals in general that I take issue with.”

“Oversaturated?” Uriel asks.

“Really?” Lilith tries to interject. “Is this really what you want to be focusing on right now?”

“There are no other musicals in Heaven. It gets very tedious,” Aziraphale explains. 

“There are other musicals?” Uriel demands. 

“Yes!” Aziraphale cries, exasperated. “You’ve been passing advertisements for several of them the entire time we’ve been meeting down here.”

“How many more musicals are there?” Uriel asks. 

“Many,” Aziraphale says. “It’s just that most of them are written by interesting people who end up going to Hell when they die!”

“Where we do absolutely nothing with all that talent, by the way,” Crowley points out, turning to Lilith. “Do you have any idea how many world-class poets and composers and musicians we have roasting away down there? Do you have any idea what we could _do_ with all that talent? The titanic clashing of egos alone would be worth charging admission for.”

“I feel like we’re getting away from the point,” Lilith says. “The point being: an extraordinary rendition has nothing to do with musical theater.”

“Then what is it?” Uriel asks, still looking a little wild-eyed from the revelation of there being other musicals. 

There is a very loud silence. 

“Right, I’ll take that one,” Crowley says. “I got a nice little commendation for that euphemism.”

“I thought you got one for the _practice_,” Lilith says mildly. 

“Like you’ve never lied on your paperwork,” Crowley scoffs. “Like we haven’t _all_ lied on our paperwork. This is a meeting of professional-grade lairs that we’re having right here.”

“What does it mean?” Uriel hisses, before the conversation can be waylaid further. 

“Right, so,” Crowley says. “There are some countries on Earth, such as the one we’re in now, where torture is illegal. That’s still true, right?”

“The law’s still on the books,” Aziraphale says. 

“That’s better than the alternative,” Crowley says. “Because there are more countries without those laws. So, sometimes, when someone in the government of a country such as this one wants someone tortured- generally for information- they order an extraordinary rendition, which means that they kidnap the person and take them to a country without such laws, where they can legally be tortured.”

Uriel absorbs this information without changing her facial expression at all. After a moment, she turns to Aziraphale, still stony-faced. “So, Gabriel was implying that we were going to torture you, when he said that.”

“It was less of an implication and more of a dressing up of the threat, I think,” Aziraphale replies. He frowns, and turns to Crowley. “He couldn’t possibly have meant it like a performance, could he?”

“When said in between kidnapping you and trying to execute you?” Crowley says. “I doubt it. He might not have meant to act on it, but he definitely wanted you scared of it.” That might be a tad too specific for someone who only heard about it second-hand to say to someone who had lived through it, but neither Lilith or Uriel seem to notice. 

“Yes, that does fit,” Aziraphale says contemplatively. “Hmm. Uriel, would you say that your understanding of the phrase would be the prevalent one in Heaven?”

“Probably,” Uriel replies. “Why?”

“Because if Gabriel said it expecting the threat to be generally understood but it went over your head, that’s one thing,” Aziraphale tells her. “And if he said it as a sort of coded message to me, that’s a very different thing, one which begs quite a few questions.”

“One of which is: why does he know that it’s about torture when the rest of you are about to break into a chorus of _Do-Re-Mi_?” Crowley asks. 

“Don’t start singing!” Lilith and Aziraphale snap as one. 

“I did that _once_!” Uriel protests. “One time!”

Crowley tries to imagine what the circumstances behind _that_ might have been. For some reason, he can mostly just picture Aziraphale having the same reaction to the Archangel Uriel breaking out in song at the Ritz as he’d have to Crowley the first time he’d walked into the bookshop wearing nothing but a bikini: namely, turning bright red, turning his face up to the ceiling, and asking if it wanted a sweater.

He leans into Aziraphale as he cackles, mostly so he doesn’t fall off the couch. 

“I would move Gabriel to the top of your list, if I were you,” Lilith says as he catches his breath. 

“I think I should,” Uriel says, nodding. “I don’t know how I’m going to manage that, but I think I should definitely do that.”

“You know what? If we’re going to be discussing _The Sound of Music_ and torture all at once-”

“Must we?” Aziraphale moans. 

Crowley ignores him, and continues. “-then I feel like we should be drinking. How do you feel about wine?”

“I could go for a glass right about now,” Lilith admits. 

“I had a glass once,” Uriel says. “I’m not sure I enjoyed it.”

“Did he pick the vintage?” Crowley asks, jerking his head in Aziraphale’s direction. 

“Yes,” Lilith replies, as Aziraphale makes an offended noise. 

“Yeah, he favors the sweet stuff,” Crowley says. “I’ll get something a little drier and we’ll see if you like that better.” He’s got a bottle he’s been saving mostly because he has no idea what to do with it. It started out life as a pretty basic cabernet sauvignon, but had proven stubborn: when he’d glared at it, it had refused to turn into a Chateau Lafite Rothschild, and instead it’d gotten stuck somewhere in between the two as something called Almaviva. 

That’s a kind of Chilean wine. He’d had to google that. 

“You know, I’ve never understood how wine could be dry,” Lilith says contemplatively. “It’s all liquid, right? And it’s not like they make it from a powder.”

“They don’t?” Uriel asks. “What is it made from, then?”

“Grapes, I think,” Lilith replies. 

Crowley looks at them for a moment, before turning to Aziraphale. “How many years have you been meeting with them again? Three? Four? And you’ve never explained wine to them?”

“We didn’t discuss musical theater either,” Aziraphale points out.

“Well, what did you talk about in between all the plotting?” Crowley asks. 

“We mainly discussed the importance of clear communication of one’s emotions in a relationship,” Aziraphale informs him, completely deadpan. 

Both Uriel and Lilith recoil in horror. 

Crowley laughs. “I love you, you daft bastard,” he says, pressing a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth. He stands quickly, so he doesn’t get stuck to the couch by the soppy expression of shocked delight that Aziraphale is suddenly beaming out into the room. “Right. I’m going to get some wine, and then we’re going to workshop this. Hang tight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If ever write a sequel to this, you're damn right it's going to be crackfic of these four going on bizarrely politically-minded double dates.


End file.
